Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha on Monday said that government is still working to resolve the issue of outstanding payments from the Panamanian government for rice supplied.
Although he did not go into details, Mustapha said the government has recently received some positive news from officials in Panama and he voiced his optimism that the matter would be resolved shortly.
“We are working on it. Let me be frank, I don’t want to make a commitment but we are working to resolve the matter and I am optimistic it should be resolved shortly… I heard some positive news and hopefully we can get it resolved…,” he told Stabroek News on the sidelines of the distribution of the fisherfolk cash grant at the Lusignan Community Centre Ground.
His comments came a day after this newspaper reported that two Essequibo rice millers have moved to the court in a bid to secure payment of millions of dollars owed to them by the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) from the 2018 rice deal with Panama.
Nazeemul Hakh and Shareeda Hakh, of Golden Fleece Rice Investment, by way of a fixed date application, are asking the court to appoint an arbitrator to preside over their dispute with the GRDB. The millers are owed a collective sum of US$308,620.03, equivalent to GYD$63,807,036, which they say has been outstanding for nearly four years.
According to the Hakhs’ application, which was seen by this newspaper, the sum is owed for the supply of long grain white rice shipments under two contracts. The rice was supplied between August 1, 2018 and November 7, 2018.
They contend that since that time they have made several requests to the GRDB for payment and while it was promised it has yet to materialise.
In June, their attorney, K.A. Juman-Yassin SC, wrote to the General Manager of the GRDB, Badrie Persaud, and requested payment for his clients. In reply, Persaud indicated that the matter was engaging the attention of the GRDB’s Board of Directors.
Juman-Yassin wrote Persaud again in July requesting the utilisation of the arbitration facility agreed to under their contract in order to commence arbitration proceedings. There was subsequently no response from Persaud.
“By reason of the failure and or refusal and or neglect by the respondent to fulfil and or perform its contractual obligations under the contracts…, the applicants have suffered and will continue to suffer financial loss, as the applicants had to pay the farmers who had supplied the paddy and they have to be paying interest to the bank for monies that is owed, as a result of not being paid by the respondent,” the application states.
The millers contend that the failure of the GRDB to pay them from November, 2018 to date “is unduly long and unreasonable” and that they are not convinced that sincere and strident efforts have been made “to obtain the sums from buyer in Panama.”
Investigations have revealed a delay in payments of $1,184,198,400 owed by the Panamanian government and last December President Irfaan Ali informed millers that it has been difficult to get a commitment from the Panamanian government to honour their payment obligations.
In 2018, the governments of Guyana and Panama renewed their agreement for the supply of rice to the lucrative Panamanian market for 2019. The value of that contract was US$5.2 million and saw the supply of 200,000 quintals (equivalent to 9,075 tonnes) of white rice being shipped.
